It turns out there's a lot going on in the 'Internet of Things' space in our state. There's also a ton of excitement and anticipation about where all this new technology is headed. Must be time for a conference! A group of technologists and early adopters in the Twin Cities... Continue reading

[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com, where I am a contributor. Image credit: Telegraph UK.] Basically, app discovery is a bitch, and the App Store is no longer the answer. That is the gist of a report on “2015 App Store Competition” published a couple days ago... Continue reading

Think of it as the morning after. Actually, it was the Monday following the week when 2015 International CES ended, on a Friday. I was scrolling through my email, trying to decompress — feeling some pride in surviving multiple weeks of being blasted with hundreds (thousands?) of PR pitches from... Continue reading

I didn’t go to the CES show looking to buy anything. I was already spending enough money getting there… and, um, making cabbies rich once I arrived. But the chance to listen to Neil Young’s Pono music player at the Showstoppers press event at CES on Tuesday evening last week... Continue reading

Well, actually, I didn't crash it (I had a press pass), but I did stumble in late... :-( Would you believe, just as it was wrapping up? Damn long cab rides! But there were still lots of people milling about on stage, and both the vehicles were still there. So,... Continue reading

[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com, where I am a contributor.] Minnesota mobile technology firm DoApp Inc. announced today it has sold its mobile real estate platform to publicly traded CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a global property information, analytics, and data-enabled services provider based in Irvine, California. Seven... Continue reading

The eighth annual Defrag event is about to fire up in Denver, and I'm here once more -- for my eighth year in a row! Really looking forward to another amazing, mine-expanding program. Watch for more here, and of course at @GraemeThickins throughout the next two days. Continue reading

One of our largest locally sponsored tech events here in Minneapolis is the MobCon Conference, dubbed "Where Mobile Minds Connect." The third annual version was held November 13th & 14th, 2014, at the Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis. The event is put on by MentorMate, a large mobile development firm that... Continue reading

In a post today in the Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” blog (which covers media, entertainment, celebrity, and the arts), the latest music video from Weird Al Yankovic was featured. It’s hilarious!! Take a look there on that post (length is 4:34)... I'll wait. What’s cool is that the video has... Continue reading

I attended the Glue Conference May 21-22 in Broomfield, CO, and a pre-event on May 20 called API Strategy & Practice. It was my sixth Glue in a row, since the event began in 2009. It's been a very popular developer event, and has grown each year -- now attracting... Continue reading

At the Glue Conference May 21-22 in Broomfield, CO, StrongLoop announced it is greatly simplifying data synch and replication for mobile apps requiring APIs and connectivity to enterprise data sources. The company's LoopBack open-source API framework, written in Node.js, is used to connect devices to enterprise data sources. This new... Continue reading

Well, I’ve now had a chance to catch my breath after a whirlwind few days in NYC at Gigaom’s Big Data event. So, this morning, I got to thinking, after doing our weekly Minnov8 podcast, that I should try to tell you about some of the high points for me... Continue reading

Hell yes, video is data, according to Steve Russell, CEO and Founder, Prism Skylabs. He began by reminding us that there's a ton of video out there -- something like 200 times the amount of video that's uploaded to YouTube every day is recorded out in the real world, just... Continue reading

Ari Gesher, Engineering Ambassador, Palantir Technologies, just gave an animated talk, starting with the whole history of computing and operating systems (well, compressed a bit), and how it was all so custom (bespoke) -- drawing an analogy to where big data is these days. He cited this classic tweet from... Continue reading

This was an amazing session -- the speaker's personal story made us all gasp! Wow, follow Ramona Pierson, cofounder and CEO of Declara on Twitter (@ramonapierson). Better than me trying to quickly recap it, watch the video here. She talks about how machine learning can power platforms that make sure... Continue reading

Om Malik did a great on-stage interview (as he always does!) of Ben Medlock, CTO at SwiftKey, and Tim Tuttle, CEO, Expect Labs. Check out these two companies -- I wish I could type fast enough to cover their insights! (Maybe their technologies can help?) Here’s how Gigaom billed this... Continue reading

Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly is on stage with Tom Krazit, Executive Editor of Gigaom. He's now talking about the $160M(!) his firm just raised -- from T. Rowe Price (which invests primarily in public companies), Google Ventures, and Dell (led by Michael himself). How soon will Cloudera be a $1B... Continue reading

Derrick Harris, Senior Writer at Gigaom, is doing this final session: "For the first time, Gigaom presents its selections of the best and brightest big data startups" and gives each of them an award. Each founder is onstage for a four-minute interview before we break for a reception. Adam Bonnifield... Continue reading

"What data are you or company willing to sell, and what are people willing to buy?" That's what Juliette Powell, CEO and Founder of Turing AI, asks in this chat with Stacey Higginbotham. Can data be monetized in this manner? -- you know, like an eBay for data. Could you... Continue reading

We're now hearing from David Soloff, CEO of Premise, about how microdata can make a big impact on macroeconomics. His company is using crowdsourcing to bring economic indicators into the age of globalization and real-time data. Armed only with smartphones, Premise’s volunteers take pictures that are potentially worth - you... Continue reading

A new computing paradigm is entering the commercial market: quantum computing. GigaOM says it has real potential to solve currently unsolvable big data problems, without increasing energy consumption. Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave, is giving us a hint of how it will change what’s possible for big data. Think in... Continue reading

Peter Guerra, Principal, Booz Allen Hamilton, in a discussion with Tom Krazit, Executive Editor, Gigaom, says Amazon is making it easier for more clients to trust the public cloud, but there will always be those who want private infrastructure -- government clients being the obvious. He said data tagging allows... Continue reading

Justin Kosslyn, Product Manager at Google Ideas, is telling us about the Polaris project ("For a World Without Slavery"), which is making it possible to map, expose, and disrupt illicit networks with technology. The US National Human Trafficking Hotline has 150+ structured variables for 20,000 calls a year to drive... Continue reading